The card that we expect to bear the RV870 codename is coming this year, probably in autumn 2009. We can only hope it will come before it gets really cold in western hemisphere, but these plans tend to move.

This might be the first 40nm DirectX 11 chip on market but Nvidia might be ready with its DirectX 11 at just the same time. 

It is pointless to speculate who will win this round as both ATI and Nvidia have high hopes with DirectX 11 chips, as they expect that Windows 7 and this new API will turn sales around and get people to buy more graphics chips.

We have already heard that if there are no delays the chip that we call GT300, Nvidia’s first DirectX 11 performance chip, should be coming in Q4 2009.